Freud's most brilliant discovery and conceptual creation -- was 'transference'.
It is in the sphere of the transference - and, more particularly, in the sphere of 'transference complexes' (a combination of Freudian and Jungian terminology) -- that we move into the deepest -- and darkest -- closets of the personality, with sometimes brilliantly creative behavioral consequences; at other times, horribly self-destructive behavioral consequences -- and oftentimes, both.
Interwoven into the sphere of the transference is a number of other Psychoanalytic and post-Psychoanalytic concepts such as:
1. Introjection: metaphorically, 'swallowing whole' a thought, idea, belief, value...like a child often introjects the beliefs and values of his or her parents;
2. Identification: involves 'behavioral copying' like a small child often watches and copies the behavior his mother and/or father;
3. Projection: 'seeing some element of the outside world' in the same way that we consciously and/or subconsciously 'see ourselves', like watching a movie of ourselves that we 'project' out into the outer world -- but most of the time, we don't even recognize that we are watching and projecting onto a friend or a lover or an enemy or an animal or an object or a creative story or essay a characteristic, a thought, a feeling, a flaw, an impulse, a strength...that fully or partly, distinctly or subtley, consciously or subconsciously belongs to us...We tend to be alienated from our own projections unless and/or until we train ourselves to fully recognize and accept the fact that it/they belong to us;
4. Compensation: Adjusting and/or modifying our thoughts, feelings, impulses, and/or behavior to fit with new information and/or experiences that are constantly coming into our ego, thought, and feeling process. Call this also, 'mutation' and/or 'compensatory evolution'.
5. Displacement/Distortion: Most different types of transference have a greater or lesser amount of 'displacement' and/or 'distortion' in them. Displacement implies the element of 'cognitive-emotional-behavioral inappropriateness' based on the idea that the transference complex and/or element which originated in Situation A -- let us say usually up to or before the age of 7 or 8 years old in childhood -- is then functionally -- and/or dysfunctionally (usually dysfunctionally) 'transferred' to Situation B which may be 10, 20, or 30 years later in some similar - but significantly different -- adult encounter, and/or relationship. To the extent that this is true, we can say that the transference is displaced and/or distorted onto an inappropriate adult person and/or into an inappropriate social setting many, many years after the origin of the childhood transference complex.
6. Contactful Transference: However, in some and/or even many adult transference relationships, we will find that a person's particular 'transference projections and reactions' are quite relevant and appropriate to the present person and relationship at hand. Indeed, this is usually the most outstanding feature of the whole 'transference comlex' -- searching in the present for someone who reminds us of some element of our 'unfinished emotional and self-esteem business' of the past.
What has happened is that 'the transferring person or subject' has subconsciously sought out and found a person in his or her adult life ('the transference object') who appropriately and/or inappropriately reminds the transferring person of his or her original childhood transference figure/object. This starts to get complicated so let me try to utilize some metaphors and examples to illustrate what is going on here.
We move through life and we find a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife -- or 'other friend and/or lover' - who reminds us of an important childhood transference figure in our 'template' of subconscious, unfinished, emotional complexes in our personaliy.
Imagine a 'roulette wheel' in the subconscious memory- fantasy template of our personality. Every number on this 'psychological roulette wheel' represents an assortment of different possible 'memory-fantasy' transference complexes -- 'metaphorical planets or moons' if you will that are spinning around the main planet or sun of our 'Central Ego'. You can even look at them as being like 'astrological signs or planets' that create for us a myriad of potential 'biochemical-psychological-philosophical' relationship possibilities...spinning around in our head looking for a particular type of 'match' or 'fit' in the real world. This is the world of 'transference complexes'.
And then in the real world, we hit a 'fit'. Now I don't give complete credibility to 'astrological signs and readings and predictions...' But I don't completely discredit them either. I look at 'coincidences' and 'accidents' in life and I don't always completely discard them as coincidences and accidents. I look at potential 'emotional fits' between coincidences and accidents on the one hand -- and the internal workings of 'subconscious emotional transference complexes' on the other hand.
Here are some of the different types of 'mystical coincidences' (the head of The Toronto Gestalt Institute (George Rosner at the time I was learning there -- off and on between 1979 and 1991 -- used to call them 'wu wu connections') that I do not automatically dismiss and view as possible 'mystical transference fits': 1. My dad's birthday is April 2nd. So too is my girlfriend's birthday who I have been with for almost 10 years. My son's birthday is October 15th. That just happens to be Nietzsche's birthday. Freud and Jung met for the first time on March 3rd (1907). That's my birthday -- 48 years later. Alexander Bain is, I believe, usually viewed as being the 'first academic or technical psychologist' -- the first philosopher to specifically move from the study of philosophy into the more particular study of psychology. I did a bit of a 'geneology check' on my family's roots and couldn't find a connection with this man's lineage...and yet I look at this man's biography and his work -- in philosophy, psychology, English (spelling, grammar)....and I see his academic interests written all through my own personality...Also, Alexander Bain taught at The University of Aberdeen, Scotland, which is the city where my ancestors came from...I feel some serious <em><strong>'Karma'</strong></em> with this man...even if there are no (at least known) genetic roots.
My work may or may not come anywhere close to Alexander Bain's level of academic significance but once again I fin it 'mystcally coincidental' that ...if I had one choice of what I would like to do with the rest of my life, I would like to create 'The DGB PEPP (Philosophy-English-Psychology-Politics)...Club' focusing on the study and dialectic evolution of Philosophy, English, Psychology ..the same three areas of study that Alexander Bain specialized in...
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Karma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Kamma (disambiguation).
Spirituality portal
Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म kárma (help·info), kárman- "act, action, performance"[1]; Pali: kamma) is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies.
The philosophical explanation of karma can differ slightly between traditions, but the general concept is basically the same. Through the law of karma, the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others. The results or 'fruits' of actions are called karma-phala. In religions that incorporate reincarnation, karma extends through one's present life and all past and future lives as well.
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Alexander Bain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bain
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dgb, continued...
One way or the other -- whether I am 'reaching too far' on these 'coincidental connections' or not -- it is no accident that we all narcissistically and symbolically return to the scene of our 'childhood transference memories and figures' to 're-create' the 'old scene' again, to re-live it again -- and to try to narcissistically 'finish' or 'complete' that which was left 'unfinished' and/or 'unresolved' the first time.
This phenomenon gave rise to Freud's concepts of the 'repetition compulsion' and the 'death instinct' which do not do sufficient justice to what is happening here. The essence of the childhood transference scene -- and the memory -- is that it is narcissisically unfinished, and incomplete because either there has been a 'life-changing, self-esteem injury' here, and/or the opposite -- a narcissistic triumph or pleasure -- and a 'fixation' with this triumph and/or pleasure.
In the case, of a life-changing self-esteem tragedy, traumacy, and/or injury, the one thing that Freud could not get his head around -- and perhaps his main reason for abandoning his Childhood Traumacy/Seduction/Sexual Assault Theory -- is that Freud couldn't understand why a person, usually a 'hysterical' woman in his early clinical practise, but equally applicable to both sexes, would want to return, over and over again -- obsessive-compulsively -- metaphorically in clinical practise and in adult relationships to the scene of his or her greatest childhood and lifetime traumacies/tragedies. This clinical fact violated and flat-out contradicted his 'unpleasure theory' which stated that people would go out of their way to avoid pain -- and/or its re-creation. And yet, here in the 'deterministic' throes of an obsessive-compulsive-addictive transference complex' people were coming back over and over again metaphorically, symbolically to the childhood scenes of their greatest traumacies -- and self-esteem traumacies.
Why in God's name, would they/we want to do this -- and often in the process, re-create, re-live the old childhood pain all over again, often to the tune of brand new -- but old self-destruction all over again -- unless they derived some sort of contorted, twisted, masochistic pleasure from this experience? Which seems to be more or less what Freud concluded -- and also that there was some sort of twisted narcissistic pleasure in the old traumatic childhood scene -- which led Freud up the road, up the path -- a partly wrong one, I believe -- to 'distorted, screen memories' and then to 'dreams' and 'unconscious childhood fantasies' and 'The Oedipal Complex' and later to 'the repetition compulsion' and the 'death instinct'.
DGB Philosophy-Psychology doesn't go to any of these later Freudian places in the exact same way that Freud did -- except from a different post-Freudian, integrative perspective -- specifically, a combined Psychoanalytic, Adlerian, Jungian, Transactional Analysis, and Gestalt perspective that focuses on the idea of of 'transference incompletion' and 'unfinished childhood business' -- the compensating wish and fantasy to complete or finish this unfinished childhood business, the childhood self-esteem traumacy -- in a more <em><strong>self-empowering </strong></em>fashion.
This is how in Ronald Fairbairn's terminology and conceptuology -- our 'childhood rejecting transference object' becomes also at the same time our 'childhood exciting transference object' as we view this and only this person as holding the key to 're-completing the wholeness' of the 'void' or 'abyss' or 'tumor' in our own fractured self-esteem growth. This combination of rejecting and exciting transference object is then transferred into our adult transference complexes and relationships.
In other words, contrary to Freud's logical analysis of this situation, there is no violation of the 'pleasure' and/or 'unpleasure' principle here but rather the pleasure principle is still very much in tact and at work. Specifically, man's -- and woman's -- greatest narcissistic triumph involves his or her own transference complex(es) whereby our greatest childhood narcissistic/self-esteem failures, rejections, abandonments, and traumacies are 'magically undone' and/or 'reversed' if only for a short period of time through the supreme triumph of our adult transference successes and accomplishments that -- if only for a brief time -- make our self-esteem 'whole' again where in the original transference scene (and/or series of scenes/memories), there may have been the creation of a huge, gaping 'self-esteem void or hole' through tragedy, traumacy, rejection, assault, abuse, betrayal, and/or the like.
In the 1980s, I called this whole transference complex -- and its underlying goal of 'compensation superiority striving, success and triumph' (Adler) -- <em><strong>transference-reversal</strong></em>. It totally follows the dictates of the pleasure and unpleasure principle -- although in an often seemingly contorted and masochistic way, for if we are 'symbolically and existentially going to play with fire again', it is more or less inevitable that we are going to get 'burnt again', as we go down some of the old childhood paths again, leading back to a newer version of one of our most feared and revered old childhood protagonists/rejectors/excitors -- and a 'symbolic repetition' of the same or similar traumacy, tragedy, and self-destruction -- all over again, relived dramatically, in all of its old and new, most exciting and most painful passon and suffering combined together to the max. This is the essence of the transference complex and at its worst, one can easily see how Freud connected it to his idea of the repetition compulsion and death instinct.
That is a DGB short version of the whole idea of 'transference' -- built from the earliest and latest work of Freud, and many of the greatest psychologists -- pro, con, and modified, integrative Psychoanalysts -- who came after him.
7. Narcissism: Another one of Freud's most important conceptual and theoretical additions to Psychoanalysis was/is the concept and phenomenon of 'narcissism'.
Narcissism is a very abstract term/concept with a broad range and focus of different nuances of meaning depending on the context it is being used in. It can be used to describe any of the following inter-related ideas, feelings, experiences: ego, pride, self-esteem, self-worth, self-absorption, self-arrogancy, selfishness, self-assertion, greed, self-pleasure, connected with traumacy and/or tragedy, we can talk about 'narcissistic traumacy', 'narcissistic anxiety', 'narcissistic excitement', 'narcissistic fixation', 'narcissistic compensation', 'narcissistic projection', 'narcissistic introjection and/or identification', 'narcissistic transference', 'narcissistic rage'...
It was the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut who was most influential in developing the last line of thought relative to transference...Freud thought that people who are extremely narcissistic cannot 'transfer' thoughts and/or feelings and/or impulses because they are too locked up, too self-absorbed, in themselves. However, Kohut correctly assessed (in my opinion) that it was/is this characteristic of 'self-absorption' in the context of a social relationship that is the essence of a 'narcissistic transference' -- i.e., the inability and/or unwillingness to see another except in the light of one's own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and projections...In other words, the extemely narcissistic person is unwilling and/or incapable of feeling empathy and/or social sensitivity towards another person. Thus, extreme narcissism is often connected to the ideas of 'psychopathic' and/or 'sociopathic', particularly when it is connected with such auxiliary thoughts, feeling, emotions -- and/or the lack of them -- as extreme possessiveness, jealousy, anger, rage, hate, violence...
Narcissism is both an normal and an abnormal, a healthy and an unhealthy process depending on its childhood course of development and evolution. And depending on the element of 'balance' vs. 'extremism' that is attached to this childhood and adult evolutionary delopmental process.
The opposite of narcissism is 'altruism' although both can and do have the same roots in caring and love -- and/or its absence.
Narcissism -- particularly pathological narcissism -- can and does have its roots in childhood neglect, abuse, betrayal, abandonment...Thus, we can speak of 'narcissistic traumacy' and/or 'narcissistic tragedy'...a traumatic/tragic loss of an important childhood figure (like mom and/or dad) and often combined with this a tragic/traumatic loss of self-esteem, self-worth, self-love...
However, narcissism can and is often connected with what would seem to be the opposite -- pampering, spoiling, treating a child as if he or she can do no wrong, as if there are no social laws, rules, regulations, and values to be learned in life -- especially the values of empathy, social sensitivity, ethics, fairness -- and reciprocity.
Thus, we can distinguish between the 'narcissism of neglect' -- i.e., 'compensatory narcissism' -- vs. the 'narcissism of being spoiled/pampered' (which involves the 'neglect of being taught and learning social reciprocity'. It is from these childhood lessons and learning processes -- and/or the lack of them -- that we, meaning DGBN Philosophy-Psychology arrive at the same concept Kohut did -- this being the concept of 'narcissistic transferences'.
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Heinz Kohut
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Kohut
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We will pick this line of thinking up in later essays.
-- DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, January 23rd, 2009
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...
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